Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2021-11-04 11:47 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2021-11-04 11:47 am
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Transactions (Uncharted)
Here's a fic about Nate and Sully in their early days, because replaying Uncharted 3 has reminded me of how much I love their relationship!
Title: Transactions
Fandom: Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,300
Summary: In a weird way, it’s reassuring that Sully outright said he’s planning to use Nate. If he’d pretended he actually cared, Nate wouldn’t have been able to trust it. The guy wants a kid to steal things for him? Nate can trust that.
“My friends call me Sully,” the guy says.
Nate’s not sure what he’s getting himself into. This Sully guy could still be a creep; he’s definitely a criminal. It’d probably be smarter to walk away.
He saved Nate’s life, though.
It’s not like he saved Nate out of the goodness of his heart. Nate’s not naïve. It means he wants Nate alive, though, whatever his motives are.
In a weird way, it’s reassuring that Sully outright said he’s planning to use Nate. If he’d pretended he actually cared, Nate wouldn’t have been able to trust it. The guy wants a kid to steal things for him? Nate can trust that.
He bought Nate the first substantial meal he’s had in pretty much ever, too. Now that Nate’s got the ring, there’s no reason to stay in Cartagena. It’s pretty tempting to follow the food.
It’s not like Nate wasn’t already sleeping with one eye open, out on the streets. He can take care of himself.
“Nathan Drake,” he says. He reaches out to shake Sully’s hand. “Nate.”
-
“C’mon, we should get some sleep,” Sully says eventually, stubbing out his cigar in the ashtray. “I’ll call up the airport tomorrow and see if I can get you on my flight.”
“What if you can’t?” Nate asks.
“Then I guess we’re here a couple more days and my finances are taking a hit,” Sully says. “I’ve seen your skills; I’m pretty sure you can make up the loss.”
Nate’s still not sure he can trust this guy, but it feels kind of good to hear it anyway. Sully’s prepared to lose something to keep him around, take a gamble on Nate being worth it.
“So where are we sleeping?” Nate asks.
“I was thinking my hotel room, unless you’ve got somewhere better.”
“Yeah, I’m living in luxury,” Nate says. “You and your friend aren’t in the same room?”
“We’re not in the same hotel, kid,” Sully says. “Katherine’s better off than I am, if you hadn’t guessed. She’s in a five-star place.”
“Yeah, kind of got the impression she was loaded when she sent her private army to shoot at me.”
He says it as casually as he can. The memory tightens up his chest, sets his heart beating too fast, and he’s annoyed about it. He survived, didn’t he? He’s fine.
-
Nate surveys the hotel room quickly as Sully lets him into it. Taking in the position of the door, the chain lock, whether the windows look like they can open.
“You gonna let me have the bed?” Nate asks.
“In your dreams,” Sully says. “With my back? You’ve been on the streets; pretty sure you can handle the floor.”
Whatever. There’s carpeting, there’s a cushion he can grab off the chair, there are probably towels he can use as blankets in the bathroom. It’s better than sleeping on a pile of garbage.
Plus it’s a good sign that Sully didn’t suggest sharing the bed, at least.
Nate heads into the ensuite to take a long shower, which, by the way, is incredible. When he comes out, he sees a bed made up on the floor, out of pillows and blankets from the actual bed. Sully’s left himself one pillow and a top sheet to cover himself with.
Nate thinks about saying thanks, or offering to give one of the blankets back.
He doesn’t say anything, in the end.
-
They actually do cross paths with Sully’s friend Katherine again. Sully manages to get Nate onto the flight with him. Turns out she’s on the same flight.
It’s a pretty tense time in the waiting area. Nate takes the ring off his neck, keeps it held tightly in his hand, the cord wound twice around his wrist.
“Victor’s using you, you know,” she says, apparently unconcerned by the fact that Sully’s sitting right there.
Nate shrugs. “I’m using him.”
-
They have a close call in Brazil over a brass pot from the nineteenth century. Nate and Sully both thought the request was fishy when it came in; it didn’t seem like the pot should be worth anywhere near what the client was offering. Turns out the main value of the pot lay in the quantity of cocaine inside, and the owners were unwilling to part with it.
They manage, narrowly, to escape both the traffickers and the authorities, and they make it back to their lodgings: a semi-disused building owned by a friend of Sully’s. Sully seems to have a lot of friends. Very few of them actually seem to like him.
There’s been a lot of running today. Nate sprawls on the floor, with no particular plans to move for the next month or so.
“You okay, kid?” Sully asks.
Nate considers. His muscles are sore, and he kind of cut himself up by diving into some serious vegetation to hide. “Still alive.”
“I’ll take it,” Sully says. Nate’s not looking his way, his eyes are on the ceiling, but he hears the heavy creak of Sully sitting down on the couch. “Shouldn’t be getting you into this kind of trouble. You’re, what, eight?”
“I’m fifteen.”
“Same thing.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes, just getting their breath back.
The floorboards Nate is lying on are rough and uneven; he can feel them through the T-shirt plastered to his back with sweat. The room is stifling, way too hot, and the sun is burning in through the dusty windows; he’d probably be a lot more comfortable if he moved into the shade, but the thing is he can’t really be bothered. If he turns his head a little, he can see Sully leaning back on the couch, taking out a box of matches.
“Why’d you start doing this?” Nate asks.
“Why d’you think, kid?” Sully gets his cigar lit, shakes out the match, flicks it aside. “Money. Why does anybody do anything?”
Nate just lies there for a while, watching him smoke.
“Can I try a cigar?” he asks at last.
Sully gives him a look. “Over my dead body.”
“You’re a thief,” Nate points out. “Suddenly you care that I’m not old enough to smoke?”
“I don’t give a shit how old you are,” Sully says. “I care that it’s my goddamn cigar. Ask again when you’re thirty and I’ll say the same thing.”
The words kind of stick in Nate’s head, they bother him. He catches himself going over them in his mind later on.
Ask again when you’re thirty.
They’re probably just words, but it still makes him wonder. Does Sully picture them together fifteen years from now?
-
They get the occasional weird look when they check into hotels or go to restaurants together. It doesn’t bother Nate; he’s mostly just amused by how uncomfortable it makes Sully.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sully says, while Nate unpacks in a Welsh bed-and-breakfast. “Maybe it’d be easier if you started calling me Dad.”
Nate stares at him in moderate horror. “You want me to what?”
“Sully’s fine when we’re alone,” Sully says. “Just saying, maybe we’d, uh, get less attention that way.”
“You know that’s way creepier than just not being my dad, right?” Nate asks. “Oh, call me Daddy, but only in public? Seriously?”
“I didn’t say Daddy.”
“I’m gonna be honest if people ask, you know,” Nate says. “They’ll say, Oh, who’s this handsome young man? and I’ll say, Hey, I’m Nate, this guy picked me up in Cartagena and asked me to call him Dad.”
“Jesus Christ, kid.”
Nate calls him Daaaaaad in front of everyone they meet for the next two days, in as drawn-out and conspicuous a manner as possible. Sully ends up buying him a steak dinner to make him promise to stop.
-
They’ve pulled this operation a few times now. Should be simple enough.
Here’s how it works: Sully meets someone in a crowded bar to ‘make a trade’. Nate’s in the crowd, pretending they don’t know each other.
Sully distracts the mark with some bullshit story, and Nate scopes them out to figure out where they’re keeping the goods. If Nate manages to lift what they came here for, he gives Sully a signal. Sully excuses himself to ‘go to the john’ – his words – and the two of them slip out the back.
Doesn’t work everywhere. Some places, Nate gets kicked out if someone spots an unaccompanied teenager in the bar. But Sully doesn’t seem to think they’ll run into problems here in Turkey.
Sully’s companion this time around is a woman who can match him for cigar consumption. Their target is a gaudy bracelet in the shape of a serpent, rubies for eyes, diamonds studded down the back.
She’s shown up wearing the bracelet, which might complicate things a little, but Nate’s up for the challenge. At least it makes the ‘work out where she’s keeping it’ part easy.
“So how’ve you been?” she asks Sully.
An old friend? Hopefully Sully doesn’t value her friendship too much, if they’re about to rob her. Nate hangs around, watching for an opening.
“Did I tell you I picked up a kid?” Sully asks.
What?
Nate looks sharply from the woman’s wrist to Sully. The times they’ve done this before, Sully’s never mentioned Nate. It’s safer not to, right? If Nate fumbles the lift, they don’t want the mark putting two and two together.
The woman folds her arms on the table, leans towards Sully. No chance of getting at the bracelet right now. “Define ‘picked up’.”
“Didn’t kidnap him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Sully says. “He was on the streets. Thought he had potential, so I took him home with me.” He winces. “It’s a lot less sordid than it sounds.”
“Or differently sordid, at least.”
“Hey, Mary, you know me. Nothing but the highest respect for the law.”
Mary sits back in her chair, which makes things a little more promising. “You never struck me as the fatherhood type.”
“I’m not a father. He helps out with jobs, that’s all.”
Daddy, Nate mouths at him. Sully manages not to react, which is good for the con, at least, even if it’s a little disappointing for Nate personally.
“Is he purely a practical acquisition, then?” Mary asks. “Or would you say you’re attached?”
Sully catches Nate’s eye, Nate thinks, just for an instant. Maybe he’s imagining it. “Well, there are worse things than having company. Drives me up the wall sometimes, though.”
“Oh?”
Sully shifts into his storytelling pose. Nate puts himself on high alert. Here comes the distraction.
Feels weird that Nate’s the distraction this time.
“Okay,” Sully says. “So the kid comes back from a hard day’s pickpocketing or whatever it is he does when I’m not around, and, what d’you know, he’s got a lead on the ancient city I’ve been looking for. He’s been sulking the last three days because I’ve said I’m not gonna take him there – whole place is supposed to be flooded, way too dangerous, he can come on hunts like this when he’s eighteen, you’ve gotta have some standards. But now he’s gonna play ball, apparently. So he gives me the lead, waves me off, I head out to find this underwater city.”
Huh. For once, Sully’s bullshit distraction story is actually not bullshit. Maybe there’s some truth to the others as well.
Sully takes a drag, lets the smoke out in a long sigh. “Lead’s no good. I come back after a week of diving for nothing.”
Did Sully pick this story just to make things harder for Nate? It’s a lot tougher to get things done stealthily when he’s struggling not to laugh.
“He’s been to the real place,” Sully says. “Cleaned it out. I walk in the door of the place we’re squatting and he’s sitting on a goddamn throne made of all the loot he’s found. This kid I’ve picked up is a complete asshole.”
Mary laughs, and Nate sees his chance. ‘Falls’, stumbles against her, apologises while he rights himself. The bracelet’s up his sleeve in seconds.
Sully winks at him while she’s distracted. “But he’s good.”
-
“Peru?” Nate asks, looking over the brief from their latest client. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Americas, but he hadn’t been anywhere overseas before teaming up with Sully; it kind of feels like a waste to go back west so soon. He’s been hoping for a chance to see Pakistan or Egypt.
“Well, we’re already wanted in Brazil and Colombia,” Sully says. “Might as well collect the South America set.”
Nate kind of ends up more than wanted in Peru. There’s a gunfight and they have to flee the scene, but Nate’s still fifteen years old and the police have longer legs. He looks up as two officers force him to the cobblestones of Cusco, catches Sully’s eye.
Sully holds his gaze for just an instant before taking off down an alley.
What a goddamn asshole.
Nate stews over it in his holding cell. Yeah, he’s not stupid; he knows his relationship with Sully was based on what they could offer each other. The moment Nate got caught, the risk became more than he was worth. He gets that.
Still. A part of him was thinking Sully might at least try to help out.
There’s a rapping on the bars, and he looks up, putting all the insolence he can summon into his expression. He’s in the mood to talk back, and right now he doesn’t care if it gets him a beating.
It’s Sully. It’s Sully in police uniform.
He didn’t run. He came back.
He looks absolutely ridiculous.
Nate raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth.
“Not a word, kid,” Sully mutters. He unlocks the cell. “Let’s get moving.”
-
Nate calls him Dad a few weeks later, experimentally. Not drawing it out, nobody else around to hear it.
“God, not this again,” Sully says. “You’re gonna have to pay me back for that steak.”
Yeah, it’s too weird. Nate’s dad was an asshole. Sully’s better than that.
Title: Transactions
Fandom: Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,300
Summary: In a weird way, it’s reassuring that Sully outright said he’s planning to use Nate. If he’d pretended he actually cared, Nate wouldn’t have been able to trust it. The guy wants a kid to steal things for him? Nate can trust that.
“My friends call me Sully,” the guy says.
Nate’s not sure what he’s getting himself into. This Sully guy could still be a creep; he’s definitely a criminal. It’d probably be smarter to walk away.
He saved Nate’s life, though.
It’s not like he saved Nate out of the goodness of his heart. Nate’s not naïve. It means he wants Nate alive, though, whatever his motives are.
In a weird way, it’s reassuring that Sully outright said he’s planning to use Nate. If he’d pretended he actually cared, Nate wouldn’t have been able to trust it. The guy wants a kid to steal things for him? Nate can trust that.
He bought Nate the first substantial meal he’s had in pretty much ever, too. Now that Nate’s got the ring, there’s no reason to stay in Cartagena. It’s pretty tempting to follow the food.
It’s not like Nate wasn’t already sleeping with one eye open, out on the streets. He can take care of himself.
“Nathan Drake,” he says. He reaches out to shake Sully’s hand. “Nate.”
“C’mon, we should get some sleep,” Sully says eventually, stubbing out his cigar in the ashtray. “I’ll call up the airport tomorrow and see if I can get you on my flight.”
“What if you can’t?” Nate asks.
“Then I guess we’re here a couple more days and my finances are taking a hit,” Sully says. “I’ve seen your skills; I’m pretty sure you can make up the loss.”
Nate’s still not sure he can trust this guy, but it feels kind of good to hear it anyway. Sully’s prepared to lose something to keep him around, take a gamble on Nate being worth it.
“So where are we sleeping?” Nate asks.
“I was thinking my hotel room, unless you’ve got somewhere better.”
“Yeah, I’m living in luxury,” Nate says. “You and your friend aren’t in the same room?”
“We’re not in the same hotel, kid,” Sully says. “Katherine’s better off than I am, if you hadn’t guessed. She’s in a five-star place.”
“Yeah, kind of got the impression she was loaded when she sent her private army to shoot at me.”
He says it as casually as he can. The memory tightens up his chest, sets his heart beating too fast, and he’s annoyed about it. He survived, didn’t he? He’s fine.
Nate surveys the hotel room quickly as Sully lets him into it. Taking in the position of the door, the chain lock, whether the windows look like they can open.
“You gonna let me have the bed?” Nate asks.
“In your dreams,” Sully says. “With my back? You’ve been on the streets; pretty sure you can handle the floor.”
Whatever. There’s carpeting, there’s a cushion he can grab off the chair, there are probably towels he can use as blankets in the bathroom. It’s better than sleeping on a pile of garbage.
Plus it’s a good sign that Sully didn’t suggest sharing the bed, at least.
Nate heads into the ensuite to take a long shower, which, by the way, is incredible. When he comes out, he sees a bed made up on the floor, out of pillows and blankets from the actual bed. Sully’s left himself one pillow and a top sheet to cover himself with.
Nate thinks about saying thanks, or offering to give one of the blankets back.
He doesn’t say anything, in the end.
They actually do cross paths with Sully’s friend Katherine again. Sully manages to get Nate onto the flight with him. Turns out she’s on the same flight.
It’s a pretty tense time in the waiting area. Nate takes the ring off his neck, keeps it held tightly in his hand, the cord wound twice around his wrist.
“Victor’s using you, you know,” she says, apparently unconcerned by the fact that Sully’s sitting right there.
Nate shrugs. “I’m using him.”
They have a close call in Brazil over a brass pot from the nineteenth century. Nate and Sully both thought the request was fishy when it came in; it didn’t seem like the pot should be worth anywhere near what the client was offering. Turns out the main value of the pot lay in the quantity of cocaine inside, and the owners were unwilling to part with it.
They manage, narrowly, to escape both the traffickers and the authorities, and they make it back to their lodgings: a semi-disused building owned by a friend of Sully’s. Sully seems to have a lot of friends. Very few of them actually seem to like him.
There’s been a lot of running today. Nate sprawls on the floor, with no particular plans to move for the next month or so.
“You okay, kid?” Sully asks.
Nate considers. His muscles are sore, and he kind of cut himself up by diving into some serious vegetation to hide. “Still alive.”
“I’ll take it,” Sully says. Nate’s not looking his way, his eyes are on the ceiling, but he hears the heavy creak of Sully sitting down on the couch. “Shouldn’t be getting you into this kind of trouble. You’re, what, eight?”
“I’m fifteen.”
“Same thing.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes, just getting their breath back.
The floorboards Nate is lying on are rough and uneven; he can feel them through the T-shirt plastered to his back with sweat. The room is stifling, way too hot, and the sun is burning in through the dusty windows; he’d probably be a lot more comfortable if he moved into the shade, but the thing is he can’t really be bothered. If he turns his head a little, he can see Sully leaning back on the couch, taking out a box of matches.
“Why’d you start doing this?” Nate asks.
“Why d’you think, kid?” Sully gets his cigar lit, shakes out the match, flicks it aside. “Money. Why does anybody do anything?”
Nate just lies there for a while, watching him smoke.
“Can I try a cigar?” he asks at last.
Sully gives him a look. “Over my dead body.”
“You’re a thief,” Nate points out. “Suddenly you care that I’m not old enough to smoke?”
“I don’t give a shit how old you are,” Sully says. “I care that it’s my goddamn cigar. Ask again when you’re thirty and I’ll say the same thing.”
The words kind of stick in Nate’s head, they bother him. He catches himself going over them in his mind later on.
Ask again when you’re thirty.
They’re probably just words, but it still makes him wonder. Does Sully picture them together fifteen years from now?
They get the occasional weird look when they check into hotels or go to restaurants together. It doesn’t bother Nate; he’s mostly just amused by how uncomfortable it makes Sully.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sully says, while Nate unpacks in a Welsh bed-and-breakfast. “Maybe it’d be easier if you started calling me Dad.”
Nate stares at him in moderate horror. “You want me to what?”
“Sully’s fine when we’re alone,” Sully says. “Just saying, maybe we’d, uh, get less attention that way.”
“You know that’s way creepier than just not being my dad, right?” Nate asks. “Oh, call me Daddy, but only in public? Seriously?”
“I didn’t say Daddy.”
“I’m gonna be honest if people ask, you know,” Nate says. “They’ll say, Oh, who’s this handsome young man? and I’ll say, Hey, I’m Nate, this guy picked me up in Cartagena and asked me to call him Dad.”
“Jesus Christ, kid.”
Nate calls him Daaaaaad in front of everyone they meet for the next two days, in as drawn-out and conspicuous a manner as possible. Sully ends up buying him a steak dinner to make him promise to stop.
They’ve pulled this operation a few times now. Should be simple enough.
Here’s how it works: Sully meets someone in a crowded bar to ‘make a trade’. Nate’s in the crowd, pretending they don’t know each other.
Sully distracts the mark with some bullshit story, and Nate scopes them out to figure out where they’re keeping the goods. If Nate manages to lift what they came here for, he gives Sully a signal. Sully excuses himself to ‘go to the john’ – his words – and the two of them slip out the back.
Doesn’t work everywhere. Some places, Nate gets kicked out if someone spots an unaccompanied teenager in the bar. But Sully doesn’t seem to think they’ll run into problems here in Turkey.
Sully’s companion this time around is a woman who can match him for cigar consumption. Their target is a gaudy bracelet in the shape of a serpent, rubies for eyes, diamonds studded down the back.
She’s shown up wearing the bracelet, which might complicate things a little, but Nate’s up for the challenge. At least it makes the ‘work out where she’s keeping it’ part easy.
“So how’ve you been?” she asks Sully.
An old friend? Hopefully Sully doesn’t value her friendship too much, if they’re about to rob her. Nate hangs around, watching for an opening.
“Did I tell you I picked up a kid?” Sully asks.
What?
Nate looks sharply from the woman’s wrist to Sully. The times they’ve done this before, Sully’s never mentioned Nate. It’s safer not to, right? If Nate fumbles the lift, they don’t want the mark putting two and two together.
The woman folds her arms on the table, leans towards Sully. No chance of getting at the bracelet right now. “Define ‘picked up’.”
“Didn’t kidnap him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Sully says. “He was on the streets. Thought he had potential, so I took him home with me.” He winces. “It’s a lot less sordid than it sounds.”
“Or differently sordid, at least.”
“Hey, Mary, you know me. Nothing but the highest respect for the law.”
Mary sits back in her chair, which makes things a little more promising. “You never struck me as the fatherhood type.”
“I’m not a father. He helps out with jobs, that’s all.”
Daddy, Nate mouths at him. Sully manages not to react, which is good for the con, at least, even if it’s a little disappointing for Nate personally.
“Is he purely a practical acquisition, then?” Mary asks. “Or would you say you’re attached?”
Sully catches Nate’s eye, Nate thinks, just for an instant. Maybe he’s imagining it. “Well, there are worse things than having company. Drives me up the wall sometimes, though.”
“Oh?”
Sully shifts into his storytelling pose. Nate puts himself on high alert. Here comes the distraction.
Feels weird that Nate’s the distraction this time.
“Okay,” Sully says. “So the kid comes back from a hard day’s pickpocketing or whatever it is he does when I’m not around, and, what d’you know, he’s got a lead on the ancient city I’ve been looking for. He’s been sulking the last three days because I’ve said I’m not gonna take him there – whole place is supposed to be flooded, way too dangerous, he can come on hunts like this when he’s eighteen, you’ve gotta have some standards. But now he’s gonna play ball, apparently. So he gives me the lead, waves me off, I head out to find this underwater city.”
Huh. For once, Sully’s bullshit distraction story is actually not bullshit. Maybe there’s some truth to the others as well.
Sully takes a drag, lets the smoke out in a long sigh. “Lead’s no good. I come back after a week of diving for nothing.”
Did Sully pick this story just to make things harder for Nate? It’s a lot tougher to get things done stealthily when he’s struggling not to laugh.
“He’s been to the real place,” Sully says. “Cleaned it out. I walk in the door of the place we’re squatting and he’s sitting on a goddamn throne made of all the loot he’s found. This kid I’ve picked up is a complete asshole.”
Mary laughs, and Nate sees his chance. ‘Falls’, stumbles against her, apologises while he rights himself. The bracelet’s up his sleeve in seconds.
Sully winks at him while she’s distracted. “But he’s good.”
“Peru?” Nate asks, looking over the brief from their latest client. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Americas, but he hadn’t been anywhere overseas before teaming up with Sully; it kind of feels like a waste to go back west so soon. He’s been hoping for a chance to see Pakistan or Egypt.
“Well, we’re already wanted in Brazil and Colombia,” Sully says. “Might as well collect the South America set.”
Nate kind of ends up more than wanted in Peru. There’s a gunfight and they have to flee the scene, but Nate’s still fifteen years old and the police have longer legs. He looks up as two officers force him to the cobblestones of Cusco, catches Sully’s eye.
Sully holds his gaze for just an instant before taking off down an alley.
What a goddamn asshole.
Nate stews over it in his holding cell. Yeah, he’s not stupid; he knows his relationship with Sully was based on what they could offer each other. The moment Nate got caught, the risk became more than he was worth. He gets that.
Still. A part of him was thinking Sully might at least try to help out.
There’s a rapping on the bars, and he looks up, putting all the insolence he can summon into his expression. He’s in the mood to talk back, and right now he doesn’t care if it gets him a beating.
It’s Sully. It’s Sully in police uniform.
He didn’t run. He came back.
He looks absolutely ridiculous.
Nate raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth.
“Not a word, kid,” Sully mutters. He unlocks the cell. “Let’s get moving.”
Nate calls him Dad a few weeks later, experimentally. Not drawing it out, nobody else around to hear it.
“God, not this again,” Sully says. “You’re gonna have to pay me back for that steak.”
Yeah, it’s too weird. Nate’s dad was an asshole. Sully’s better than that.